


Clarke's Three Laws

by meshkol (ashernorton)



Category: Marvel Ultimates, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Pining, Truth Serum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28178946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashernorton/pseuds/meshkol
Summary: Tony's a staunch advocate of Clarke’s second and third law (though he thinks the first is utter bullshit). It takes a strange alien encounter for Tony to consider the possibility that the first is just as legitimate as the others.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 7
Kudos: 57
Collections: 2020 Captain America/Iron Man Holiday Exchange





	Clarke's Three Laws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirigibleplumbing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleplumbing/gifts).



> Here's my contribution to the Holiday Exchange for dirigibleplumbing! Ngl, I started the "Tony is alive during Secret Empire" fic because _yes please_ but it ballooned into a monstrous...thing that's probably going to end up being 50k at the rate I'm going, so yeah, it's not done. Hopefully this suffices in the meantime (and isn't horribly disappointing)!
> 
> Thank you muchly to the mods for putting this fest on. I love participating in this little thing each year and even though my holiday is over, 'tis the season and all that.
> 
> Happy holidays, dirigibleplumbing, and I do hope you enjoy your gift!

The problem with extra-terrestrial baddies is the science.

Sure, they usually call it _magic_ or whatever but Tony calls bullshit on that one because he’s a staunch advocate of Clarke’s third law (and the second, though he thinks the first is utter bullshit) and simply believes that the person wielding the ‘magic’ is simply too uneducated or blockheaded to understand how it works. It’s not even a dramatisation really – fuck knows that people thought the first aeroplanes were magic, that ice ages and natural disasters were the works of gods and sorcery, that nuclear fission and fusion are magical mumbo-jumbo claimed as science by nerds in white coats, just to name a few – and Tony’s of the opinion that just because he can’t explain it ( _yet_ ) doesn’t mean that it isn’t science.

Still, some science is just fucking _bizarre_ , and aliens from other corners of the universe and/or multiverse travellers generally have that in spades.

The mission the Ultimates just finished was pretty straightforward and to-the-point, even though he figures Steve thinks differently. Most of the time, Steve _always_ thinks differently, which...fair. It’s not like the Ultimates haven’t practically manufactured the majority of their villains, whether intentionally or not, from America’s blatant ops into foreign countries all the way to the Hulk himself. It’s pretty safe to assume that there’s always more than meets the eyes when they’re fighting against some threat, though Tony personally can’t figure out why some random ‘sorcerer’ from outer space would be their fault. Maybe Thor’s, but definitely not the inhabitants of Earth. Probably.

Of course, this time Steve’s thoughts are a bigger than the usual _perhaps-S.H.I.E.L.D.-is-covering-something-up again_ , even if there surely is an element of that. Tony doesn’t really blame him, if he’s honest – Tony’s a consummate bullshitter and if he was in Steve’s current position, he’d probably be spitting mad too.

The mission was standard: some alien overlord and his alien underlings showed up, started blowing shit up in Connecticut in an attempt to take over the world or some nonsense, and the Ultimates were deployed to ostensibly quell the attack with minimal force but mostly were just told to kill them all except at least one, which would be taken back for interrogation by S.H.I.E.L.D. It’d been fine, for the most part, other than the few civilian casualties (expected, since they got there a few hours after-the-fact), the immense property damage (that Tony’ll probably have to bear the brunt of in terms of compensation), and Steve’s nice little interaction with the head bitch in charge (using his weird science weapon).

Tony hadn’t even gotten a bruise, which is nonsensically non-standard – he’s usually the one throwing himself into the fray with zero thought to his own mortality, specifically because he’s dying anyway so why the fuck wouldn’t he direct most of the fire at himself? Clint had gotten a few scratches considering his own blasé approach to his own morality but _that_ was expected, since the man goes out in practically no armour and is practically suicidal anyway, but even he had come out relatively unscathed. Hell, the Ultimates in general coming out with no semi-severe injuries is weird overall, especially since those aliens and their bonkers weapons were not fucking around.

Most of the injuries had been from the environment around them – buildings falling all over the place and general debris flying through the air – instead of the combat itself. The aliens had been pretty intent on not entering any hand-to-hand combat, probably because once they did it was all but child’s play to blow their heads off with a lazy repulsor blast or whatever, so they’d relied on their weapons. The weapons themselves had blasted pure energy of some sort but the focus of said energy was inaccurate at best, not to mention slow as hell to power up; most of the time, the aliens had aimed at one of them directly and the Ultimates all had time to placidly walk out of the way, allowing the blast to simply...miss. It’d ultimately been easy as pie to just take out all the purple-skinned bastards and tie one of the underlings up for interrogation, even though the property damage was going to be obscene.

Maybe the Ultimates had been ridiculously adept at dealing with the little shits but everyday civilians had just screamed and ran when the energy blasts had started blowing shit up.

Tony absently wonders if the aliens did literally _any_ research on Earth’s inhabitants and weaponry before they decided to waltz down for a good old-fashioned Take Over The World plot.

The only person who had been hit with the energy is Steve, who is predictably furious over it. Not only did he have tunnel vision on the alien overlord with delusions of grandeur, leaving him open to one of the previously-thought-dead underlings getting a lucky shot when his back was turned, but the effects are...well, in Tony’s opinion, it’s utterly _hilarious_ , but he’s a bit of an arsehole so eh, at least that’s standard for the course. How can anyone not find this hilarious, anyway? Steve-fucking-Rogers, world-renowned super soldier whose actions in World War II make conservative warmongers cream themselves on a regular basis, a stiff and unyielding man who spends the majority of his time violently rebelling against the depravity of the twenty-first century while also admittedly trying to figure out how to respect said depravity enough to slot into the reality of his new situation without alienating America, being hit by a beam of energy that _made him unable to lie_?

Yeah, that shit’s hilarious and anyone who disagrees is a filthy liar.

Tony’s not entirely sure _why_ those energy beams resulted in that sort of effect but he’s digging it, for the most part. He’s totally going to take one of those weapons and use it for his own purposes, somewhat so he can start shooting beams at politicians in Washington for the laughs but mostly because he wants to fire it at _Fury_ , because if this is the result to anyone who’s subjected to the energy, it probably would solve a lot of the world’s problems.

Well, as long as no one fires it at him, anyway. Actually, he should probably reverse-engineer it first, if only so he can protect himself if someone decides to aim it at him instead. There are a lot of things that Tony emphatically does not want to divulge to the open air (the schematics to the Iron Man armour, his cancer, his unbearable pash on Steve Rogers because he’s a glutton for punishment, et cetera et cetera) and the idea of being subjected to a fucking _truth ray_ or whatever is enough to make him want to throw himself off the nearest building sans suit.

And okay, perhaps finding so much amusement in Steve’s predicament when he would be horrified to be in the same situation means that Tony’s a bit of hypocrite, but he’s never claimed to be a saint. He’s the exact _opposite_ of a saint, really.

Admittedly, before Steve had been hit with the truth ray thingamajig, Tony had wholeheartedly thought that Steve was the type of guy who was brutally honest even when he probably shouldn’t be. Therefore, Tony’d naturally assumed in the beginning that being subjected to always telling the truth would be just another standard day for Steve, and he’d kind of just expected Steve to go on a verbal rampage because he’d have an excuse for speaking his mind without needing a veneer of politeness. After all, Steve might be ruthlessly honest but he did make an attempt to not be needlessly cruel...usually.

Fellow Ultimates generally get the _whole_ Steve Rogers special. Tony chooses to delude himself into thinking that it’s because Steve trusts and cares about them enough to not hold back on his abrasive personality (even if that’s about as likely as Steve being a secret Nazi) rather than Steve knowing that he can get away with being a total arsehole with the people under his direct command.

Apparently Steve being the same old arsehole they know and love is not in the cards though, even if Steve’s doing an admirable job of subverting his whole predicament. No matter what anyone says, Steve isn’t just a thick-headed moron who eats crayons when he’s not bashing skulls in; he’s smart in his own way and certainly knows how to work things to his own favour, especially when it’s his own head on the line. After the effects of the alien weapon had been realised by S.H.I.E.L.D.’s medical division – which had been because Steve had immediately told the doctors that he had a horrible headache and was feeling nauseous, even as his handsome face had twisted with horrified disbelief when he hadn’t brushed off his symptoms with the usual “I’m fine, now fuck the fuck off” he was infamous for – and they’d done a barrage of tests – mostly asking him basic questions like the colour of the walls or the day of the week while demanding that he lied to them, and of course Steve hadn’t been able to – Steve had gotten _clever_.

To be fair, Tony respects how Steve’s going about this, and he’s definitely taking notes in the event that he gets mind-whammied by an alien truth ray himself before he can reverse-engineer a safeguard. Honestly, answering questions in a round-about way, covering up any truthful reply with subterfuge and misdirection, _is_ rather clever, and even though Steve is compelled to the point of physical pain _to_ answer any and all direct questions truthfully (so he can’t just stubbornly keep his mouth closed), Steve’s also answering questions in ways that are _technically_ true but have multiple meanings or can be read as something else entirely.

Still, Tony’s smarter than all these fucking idiots in white coats, not to mention the rest of his team, so he’s definitely devising ways to take advantage of the situation for the giggles. He hasn’t made an attempt to ask any of his burning questions yet, ones that he’s had since before S.H.I.E.L.D. yanked Steve's perfectly sculpted body out of the ice even, but _boy_ does he have questions and he’ll be damned if Thor finds a way to dissipate the ‘magic’ before he can ask them.

The perfect moment comes when Steve says irritably, “Get the fuck out of my room,” his voice not loud but instead eerily even. Steve likes to bellow shit on the regular, both when he’s mad and when he’s having a good day (not that he seems to have many of the latter), but everyone who has any experience with Captain America knows that he’s at his limit when he gets quiet and deathly calm.

So it’s no surprise when everyone in Steve’s hospital room gets twitchy, Tony included, but the lead doctor – Mathers, according to his neat little name tag – replies with wary exasperation, “Captain, we can’t leave you alone when you’ve been exposed to an unknown radiation from an extra-terrestrial device. We can clear out the room but you need someone in here to keep an eye out, if only to notify medical professionals in the event that you are somehow unable to do so yourself.”

“I’ll stay,” Jan says sweetly, and yeah, _no_. Tony likes Jan despite her appalling taste in husbands but he doesn’t trust her as far as he can throw her with a Steve that can’t lie. That can only go one of two ways: Jan using Steve’s predicament against him for personal matters, like finding out how he really feels about her or even other personal secrets that she has no business knowing as a bone fide gossip; or Steve absolutely losing his goddamn mind and alienating her with brutal, normally-smothered truths until she leaves the team for good. It could go either way in Tony’s expert opinion, since Jan’s a big fan of blackmail _and_ knowledge whilst Steve is understandably still raw and bleeding from their failed relationship, which definitely hadn’t ended well in the slightest.

Steve seems to echo Tony’s thoughts because he grimaces and says flatly (and honestly, of course), “I would rather go back into the ice.”

Jan looks both hurt and offended, so Tony pipes up airily, “Eh, I’ll keep the old man company. I promise not to ask you about your sex life if you promise not to tell me how you _really_ feel about me.”

Strangely, Steve looks honest-to-God _relieved_ at Tony’s words and says quickly, “Stark can stay. Everyone else, get the fuck out.”

The white coats all look annoyed but Mathers does nod with appeasement, turning to Tony and giving him the rundown of what he needs to be on the lookout for. It’s kind of irritating because Tony’s no stranger to weird encounters with alien shit _or_ injuries but he allows it, if only because he doesn’t want to deal with the inevitable argument if he gets sassy. He knows Steve’s tired of being interrogated and Tony himself just wants to get Steve alone, both because he wants to subtly ask his own questions and because he really does care about the arsehole.

God, does Tony care about him, and that’s something he keeps so deeply buried that sometimes the thought of loving Steve Rogers feels like a lie even to himself.

It’s necessary to bury it though. Even completely discounting Steve crushing Tony’s poor little heart when he inevitably turned Tony down because he’s a good heterosexual Catholic like a proper man is, Tony’s...well, he’s dying. He could justify marrying Natasha on his deathbed but he can’t justify putting that on Steve – Steve’s already lost so much and he’s going to lose so much more when Bucky and Gail finally succumb to their own age (or in Bucky’s case, his own terminal cancer diagnosis). Even if Steve, by some cosmic impossibility, _did_ want Tony, it would be heartbreakingly cruel to even try, he thinks. Of course, that wouldn’t just be his choice, since Steve would have to come to terms with Tony’s looming expiration date and decide whether it was worth it, but it is hard to think about.

But the whole thing is moot point, so there’s no reason to lose sleep over it. Steve has never and will never be interested in a man like Tony and Tony’s long accepted that fact.

When they’re alone, Tony falls into the only nearby chair in a deliberately graceful display of limbs, though surprisingly Steve doesn’t snap at him for being a dramatic bastard for once, his jaw clenched tightly shut and eyes firmly drilling a metaphorical hole in his uniform-covered thigh. Tony shifts a bit, getting as comfortable as he can in the hard chair, and says brightly, “It could be worse, you know.”

“I don’t know how this could be worse,” Steve mutters, scowling heavily.

“Well,” Tony remarks, casually twirling his fingers in the air and wondering who he has to blow to get a martini around here, “it could’ve made you evil and hell-bent on world domination as one of Mr Alien’s underlings.” He pauses, then adds slyly, “Or un _bearably_ horny and willing to stick your cock in the nearest warm body with a pulse.”

Steve blanches, face going white. “Okay, both of those are worse,” Steve admits, though he looks like the admission of Tony being right about something pains him.

“Exactly, dear,” Tony says gravely, trying to smother a smile. “It would be horrible press for you to pull your cock out on Main Street and traumatise the poor American public because they’ll never measure up to your size and stamina.”

“Stark,” Steve all but growls even as his ears go pink at the tips. Tony figured he’d be red all over if his face hadn’t been so damn ashen just before, but it’s only a matter of time. Steve’s incapable of keeping his pale Irish complexion from giving him away when he’s embarrassed or mortified – though his poker face is about as good as Tony’s own on a regular day despite any flushing, which Steve usually claims as rage or frustration anyway – so Tony’s looking forward to seeing how far down that flush will go. He’s bare-chested, after all, showing off that powerful and unbearably broad chest brushed with blond hair so light it’s almost invisible. Tony wonders if the hair will really stand out if the pink blooms downwards, or if he’d even notice in the first place, too distracted by the overall view to really pick out such a finicky detail.

“Sorry,” Tony says, not sorry at all. “Just making conversation here to make up for the appalling lack of booze. Dear Lord, I imagine that being hit with an alien truth ray is akin to getting you drunk. Are you going to start sobbing about how much you love the Ultimates even though you regularly throw us through walls? Is that something I would have to call the professionals in for?”

“I’m not going to be sobbing anytime soon, and I only throw you through walls during training,” Steve says moodily, face tense as he answers Tony’s questions with careful truths. “Stop asking me questions,” he orders immediately after, shooting Tony a frustrated glare as his hands ball into fists.

“Oops,” Tony says cheerfully. “If it’s any consolation, those were supposed to be rhetorical – we all know you’re too much of a _real man_ to start sobbing all over my pretty business suit.”

Steve grimaces, swallows, clearly tries to keep himself from talking, and ultimately grinds out through what sounds like a throat full of glass, “It’s a nice suit.”

Tony blinks, then says slowly, “Well. Thank you. I’d say that I picked it out just for you but I’d be lying.”

“That must be nice,” Steve grumbles.

Tony grins, all teeth. “It is,” he confirms brightly. “Don’t worry, Cap, Thor will get to the bottom of this faster than you can say ‘I love punching Nazis’.”

“I love punching Nazis,” Steve says instantly, then adds around a quiet sigh, “I wish that had worked.”

“Well, we can try other things,” Tony says. “Maybe one of them will work. Still, you don’t seem to love a lot of things so maybe not – there’s only so many times you can love punching Nazis before you grow terribly depressed and throw yourself off a building, and I personally would be devastated to see you die, darling.”

Steve’s flush _does_ go down surprisingly far on his chest, making his pink nipples almost disappear. “I love a lot of things,” he mutters mulishly, blue eyes flicking towards Tony’s lazy, deliberately posed sprawl before he’s back to staring a hole in a massive thigh.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Tony replies teasingly, though he’s practically salivating at the thought of getting into Steve’s head. There’s so much he doesn’t know about his teammate and most of what he _does_ know revolves around justice, America, and getting into fights. Perhaps it’s a bit underhanded to use Steve’s inability to lie just to satiate his own curiosity but at least Tony’s not being self-serving right now (for once). He actually does want to know these things, if only to make Steve’s life just a little bit brighter. Tony might not have long left to make Steve happy, and he might not even be entitled to try because he knows Steve doesn’t like him much, but he _wants_ to try. There’s nothing more satisfying than making someone happy, and making someone that he secretly loves happy is the greatest satisfaction of them all.

Tony continues brightly, “We already know that you love God and country and apple pie and women in non-revealing clothes. Let me guess some others. How about—”

“Stark,” Steve growls again, and his flush is so dark it’s almost purple. He’s visibly swallowing around words, as if he’s compelled to answer a question Tony hasn’t verbally made, and while Tony knows that Steve doesn’t _have_ to offer up truths (or half-truths) if he isn’t asked directly, it has been fairly obvious that it does pain him to keep those truths bottled up if he really wants to utter them out loud.

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with declaring your love for all things, Steve,” Tony quips, stretching out a leg at an awkward angle so he can prod Steve’s thigh with a shiny loafer. “I do it all the time, very frequently for that matter, and I am told that it makes everyone around me very happy indeed, especially when they’re the object of my love and money. Let it out for the world, darling, tell us all what makes Captain America tick. Let yourself feel the buoyant emotion of being honest and free for once, and I personally promise you that I’ll make all your wildest dreams come true, no matter how much it cos—”

“I love _you_ ,” Steve croaks out, looking so mortified that it’s honestly surprising that he’s not spontaneously combusting.

There’s a long, thick pause, Tony’s brain frantically trying to compartmentalise what he thinks he just heard, and then he says slowly, “Oh. Wait. I’m terribly sorry, Steve, but I think I’ve just had a brain malfunction and heard something very strange indeed.”

Steve lets out an explosive exhale, glares at Tony, and finally rasps out, “I—oh _God_ , sometimes I just want to—to just—” He exhales loudly again, his expression morphing from humiliation directly to stubborn bullishness faster than Tony can blink, and he all but throws himself out of his hospital bed, tall and broad and bright and so fucking gorgeous that it’s almost hard to look at him. He grabs Tony by the biceps and yanks him upright, pulling him in close enough that Tony can literally _feel_ the heat radiating from his flush, and Tony almost hysterically wonders why his breath smells like peaches and nutmeg.

Steve can’t lie right now, is scientifically unable to do so even if Tony doesn’t understand the science behind it, and Tony dazedly marvels at every honest word as Steve says in a rush of hesitant, yet simultaneously resolute words, “You fucking heard me. I’m tired and I’m scared of this and I don’t know what this means, but I love you. I love your stupid hair and your stupid rants and your stupid _everything_ and you’re the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about when I’m falling asleep. You are irritating and stubborn and too damn careless with your own life and it drives me up the wall because it _hurts_ to see you care so little about something that I love so much. I want to see you every second I’m not and feel you against my hands and I want to know what you sound like when you come against me, even though I’ll probably be shit at it because I’ve never been with a man before. I have no idea what I’m doing but I love you and I want you and it’s killing me because I don’t know what that makes me.”

Tony swallows thickly and says in a small voice, “I’m pretty sure that makes you human, darling.”

“God, I can’t believe I just said all that,” Steve says, his tone dripping with defeated embarrassment.

“I can’t believe you just said all that either,” Tony echoes truthfully, then admits, “I thought you hated me.”

Steve barks out a laugh and says, “I definitely don’t hate you, unless hating someone is some batshit twenty-first slang that means I want to sleep in your bed and make you coffee and fuck you until you can’t see straight.”

Tony makes a little sound in the back of his throat that almost sounds like a groan before he manages to say, “Well. I don’t hate you either, you know. I...shit, Steve, this is _awful_. I’m _dying_ and I can’t _do_ that to you. I’m so sorry, I can’t—”

“I don’t care,” Steve says, and _he can’t lie_. “I don’t fucking care, Tony, and I don’t know what this is or what I’m doing but I _want_ you, regardless of how it ends. What is it you always say about the Fat Lady?”

Tony laughs, feeling breathless and vaguely hysterical, and replies, “It ain’t over ‘til the Fat Lady sings. You’re out of your goddamned mind, Steve Rogers, you know that?”

“I love you,” Steve states stubbornly, “and since I am physically incapable of lying right now, I hope you believe that. If loving you means that I’m out of my mind, then so be it.”

Tony shakes his head, stares at Steve’s flush face for a long moment, and then says, “You’re crazy and this is going to be a terrible development in a few months but fuck it, I love you too and I swear to _God_ if you don’t kiss me right this second I will—”

Steve surges forward and kisses Tony like he’s dying, a desperate sound tearing from his throat, and he’s pulling Tony in until there’s no space between them, their bodies clinging and hands roaming, and Tony’s entire world narrows down to Steve, just Steve, a man who he never thought would ever be into men, let alone Tony himself, yet is kissing him so perfectly that there’s no denying that Tony was wrong.

Perhaps he’s a follower of all three of Clarke’s laws, instead of just the second and third, because apparently thinking something is impossible _is_ wrong, and the only way of discovering the realm of possibility is to venture past impossibility entirely.

Tony kisses Steve back and soars.


End file.
